Could This Be Magic?
by The Crownless Queen
Summary: Lisa grows up with a mark that says 'I was checking you out.' She spends years trying to figure out what kind of man would say those words to her, until she decides to reinvent herself as the Magpie, the greatest thief that will ever live. And even with all that she does, nothing prepares her for Dean. AU.


So this got a little bit out of hand… This was only supposed to be a soulmate!AU, with the prompted sentence 'I was checking you out', but it sort of grew a life of its own, and worse than that: plot.

I hope you guys enjoy reading this.

The Russian isn't mine – it comes from google translate, so any mistake is involuntary. I have no knowledge about any of the activities discussed in this fic apart from what I gleaned from TV and movies, so my informations come from those and the internet.

 _Word count:_ 14360

 **Could This Be Magic?**

 _I was checking you out_. The words show up in a tiny scrawl around Lisa's wrist when she's three months old. It's too little to be read without a magnifying class then, but her parents breathe a sigh of relief when they see it.

There are stories, you see, of those who get their soulmark so late in life they only have the time to meet once, of those with an age gap so big one's life has already gone by by the time their other half is born.

Lisa was born on the twenty-first of February, and until the nineteenth of May, both her wrists had been completely blank.

Of course, her parents had been hoping for kinder words. There's nothing _wrong_ with Lisa's words, of course there isn't – at least they show some measure of interest, and they're decidedly less common than all the 'sorry's and 'hi's that are out there – but they still would have preferred something a little more respectful of their daughter.

So that's how Lisa grows up: with loving parents in a nice house, very boring and very safe, knowing that one day she'll meet her soulmate and will probably punch them in the face for the words permanently inscribed on her body before properly introducing herself. At least they'll have a funnier story to tell their kids than the ones her parents, who met at the bakery, have, or that's what her parents always tell their friends when they have people over for dinner.

It doesn't bother Lisa until it does, until she realizes that this perfect little girl her parents have in their mind isn't her at all, and that she doesn't really want to be.

She turns eighteen two days after she graduates from high school. That evening, she kisses her parents goodnight, waits in her bedroom until she hears the door to their bedroom close and her father start snoring, and then she grabs the backpack she's been preparing since she was fourteen and first saw someone pick on lock on the television screen.

She doesn't remember who it had been, but she still remembers the way their hands had looked, steady and strong as they bent the world to their will.

And maybe it was wrong of her – and it was certainly illegal – but she had decided right there and then that this was what she wanted to be. A thief.

In fact, she's going to be the greatest thief who ever lived.

 **.x.**

Life on the street isn't easy. She's small and scrappy, and people have often told her she could death glare someone with the best of them, but she quickly learns that it isn't enough, not by a long shot, to be left alone on the streets.

She doesn't learn to fight as much as pick up things here and there, old articles read on the internet sometimes rising up to the forefront of her mind at odd times to give her the odd piece of intel that means she gets out alive, if not completely unscathed.

She starts carrying a blade even if she never uses it – its shape in her pocket is distinctive enough to deter most people – and she buys a taser for the ones it doesn't. She learns to run fast and she's always been good at climbing things and finding the good hiding spots, so getting away is the easy part once her assailants are distracted.

She tears up one of her shirts and ties up a black band around her wrist to cover her mark, unly taking it off at night where she traces the letters with trembling fingers.

' _Will you still want me now?'_ She asks the stars, and feels strangely empowered to find that no one answers her. There is a savage kind of pleasure that rises in her stomach whenever she thinks that maybe they won't, not now that she isn't perfect little Lisa anymore, not now that she's wearing dirt like it's a second skin.

She moves up north slowly, taking her time to see the scenery. She hitches ride when she can, hikes when she cannot, and feels freer than she ever has.

She's going to America, she's decided. If she cuts her hair and binds her breasts she can pass of as a boy, and surely someone, somewhere, will hire her for the length of the trip, even if it's just to help carry cargo across the ocean. If no one will, she can always stow away. Lisa's good at staying quiet, at staying hidden. She can do this, even though she'd rather not have to.

America's bigger than London, bigger than England. She can already do a passing American accent to blend in – thank you internet – and everyone says accents simply vanish with practice anyway. She can get lost there, become a nobody.

Become a nobody, and as such start her carrier as a thief.

 **.x.**

It is far easier than she thinks it should be to get to America, and even easier to find a job to generate her some money.

She works in a dinner in New York City, waiting tables, and no one asks her any questions. She tells them her name is Lyra Hawkins, because Lyra is close enough to Lisa that she still turns when that name is called. Someday, she'll have to be able to answer to whichever name she chooses.

Two of the other girls who work at the dinner, Tanya and Rebeka, don't even speak English apart from a few sentences and what's on the menu, and Lisa takes to teaching them when they have some time between customers – the restaurant is busy most nights, but lunches are hit and miss, so sometimes there's three girls for as many clients. It's kind of nice, to know that when she leaves she'll leave a mark of her stay with those women, that she did something good there.

She spends what little time she has off work trying to figure out what her first score will be. _Start small_ , her mind whispers, but her heart is eager for something bigger.

She canvases the neighborhoods for where to start – far enough from the rickety old place she's staying at that she thinks her steps couldn't be retraced, close enough to it that she can get back easily, and vanish into the busy streets of the city even more easily.

She knows it when she sees it. The house is old, and it looks empty, but using the smartphone she bought used last week, she can see in through the windows somewhat, and what she sees looks like it could be worth something.

There are pawnshops all around the city, and she's taken note of most of them. Some she's even visited, though she's taken care to always disguise herself. Sometimes she goes there as a boy, others as a girl with a different hair color – turns out getting wigs isn't that hard when you know where to look, and the internet is always the best place to start looking. Sometimes she makes herself walks with a limp, once she even pulls off a scar and a French accent.

It's exhilarating, and she's always smiling on her way back to her place, a skip in her steps she can't quite hide as her heart beats as fast as a hummingbird's wings in her chest.

It takes her two weeks to prepare, and only one to get in, grab what she wants, and get out.

She finds cash stashed in a safe – cracking it is a challenge, but Lisa's always been good at math. Numbers just speak to her. They have a melody of their own, and humming it softly is enough to help her crack the code. Besides, there were only four digits – that was easy.

Some of the paintings look valuable but taking them would take too much time and she doesn't know anyone who could help her get rid of those. Yet. She leaves them regretfully, and grabs the jewelry instead, running her gloved hands over precious stones as she savors the moment. She takes a few other pieces too, and leaves the same way she came in: through the window.

It's harder with her loot to balance too, but she doesn't trip any of the sensors. There is a guard dog too – she had missed it on her first recon, but the second time the dog had barked at her and Lisa had been forced to walk on by. That dog barked at every passerby though, which was always good to know since it meant that this little incident wouldn't stand out.

Thankfully, Lisa knows how to take care of dogs. Getting it the sleeping medication had been the hardest part of the job, but it had been worth it.

By the end of the week, Lisa's all but sold everything she got, and that plus the cash she got from the safe means she has close to a hundred dollars hidden in her rickety flats.

She laughs as she counts her money, breathing in the smell of paper and ink. It is intoxicating, and if this is the feeling she gets from a simple home robbery, she wonders what it'll be like if she tries something a little bit harder.

Her wrist twinges until she falls asleep that night, and not even tracing the letters in her familiar ritual seems to help.

' _Is that it then?'_ She can't help but think. ' _Are you giving up on me already?'_

She thinks she must be imagining it, but it almost feels like the tingling sensation in her arm vanishes after that.

Of course, it could also be that she falls asleep.

 **.x.**

Lisa spends three years in New York – until she's twenty-one. In that time, she accumulates five different identities, all with 'proper' papers and everything. That's not counting the other dozen of aliases she still uses to pawn off what she steals, though she does less of that as time passes, drawn to bigger scores, to harder targets than rich people's homes.

She learns more about security systems than she's ever wanted to know, but the more she learns, the more it fascinates her. Safes and vaults are her favorites, a leftover from that excitement over forcing open her first lock years ago no doubt. That little clicking sound is always enough to make her heart beat a little faster, her smile a little wider. It steals the breath right out of her lungs, and it is great. Everything she ever wished for.

Another thing that takes the breath right out of her lungs is rappelling. She takes classes for a year before she starts on her own, learning how to climb and how to fall, and the first time she uses it on a job she nearly breaks a leg, but it is so worth it. She'd never have been able to get inside that building if she hadn't entered through the top floors, and the bruises she got paled in comparison to the payout she got.

She keeps most of her money stashed away in warehouses. She doesn't keep any of what she steals – well, except for the money of course – so it doesn't take that much room. She starts planning a few safehouses too, and not just in New York City.

And during all this time, Lyra Hawkins still lives in the same crappy little apartment. Lyra even has a bank account, though it doesn't have much in it. How could it? Lyra is just a waitress, and that only barely covers the bills and essentials.

Alice Nergson, however, lives in a much nicer place. Alice even has money, you see – she inherited from a rich uncle when he passed two years ago.

Alice is Lisa's mother's middle name. There barely is a day that goes by that she doesn't miss her parents, but she made her choices, and this is the life she wants.

She sends them emails, sometimes, with carefully photoshopped pictures that makes her look like she's anywhere but where she actually is.

She's on a trip around the world, she told them in the letter she left them on the night she left, and she does everything she can to make sure they believe that, even though she hasn't moved in three years.

And maybe three years are enough, though. She's getting antsy. She needs novelty, she thinks, and she's not just talking about quitting robbing homes.

The police have tracked enough of her crimes back to her – well, her in the sense that they know the same thief did it – to make her life in New York complicated. They've even given her a name – the magpie. It's terribly unimaginative, but Lisa likes it anyway.

One last score, she tells herself. One last score, and then I'm leaving.

 **.x.**

There is an exposition on rare Arabic artefacts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and one of them in particular catches Lisa' eye.

It's a bejeweled dagger. Its hilt is encrusted with rubies, as is its sheath. It glows golden in the video Lisa first sees it in, and it's even more impressive when she visits the exhibit.

The museum's security is impressive. It's a far cry from what she's used to from the houses she breaks into – there are guards, for once, and too many video cameras for her to avoid them all.

She has a month to prepare for this though, so when the time comes – the last night of the exhibit – she is more than ready.

She has three solid back-up plans, and five more she'd rather not have to use, and this – this is the heist that will finally set her apart from common thieves.

She thinks she may have overdone it a little, but when morning comes and she finally escapes – her trusty taser having gotten rid of the last of the guards for her – on her second back-up plan, readjusted with elements of back-up plans three to five, she's insanely glad she did.

She has the dagger though, and with it a ticket to higher playgrounds, the proof that she can fulfill her dream.

She leaves New York the next day, and heads south, to California. She settles in Los Angeles this time, and calls herself Katya, using the Russian accent that three years working with Tanya and Rebeka has taught her.

She steals diamonds there, jewelry more precious than she knows wat to do with, and art. There is so much art to steal, she had no idea it could be so valuable.

Some paintings, of course, but mostly artefacts, not unlike the dagger a rich Asian man bought from her two months after she had acquired it.

Katya works as a waitress too, and on her free nights she prowls the dancefloors, stealing hearts and wallets as she goes by.

She still wears a black band around her wrist, even if it's no longer from a shirt she ripped up when she was eighteen, and lets the men and women who approach her come to their own conclusions.

After all, as long as they don't see that the writing is still the jet black ink that indicates a living match instead of the faded grey of a deceased one, how can they tell the difference?

It grates on her a little though, this lie, but well. There are so many in her life already, what's one more? This one is even more innocent than her other ones – there's no crime attached to it, just shame, and the slightest bit of fear.

Yes, fear. Imagine that, the girl who isn't afraid to jump off a building, scared at the thought of finding out that the person the universe – God, maybe, who knows if he's real? – thought perfect for her doesn't like the person she's shaped herself into.

She only stays two years in Los Angeles, one in San Francisco after that. She swings by Las Vegas before she spends six months in Mexico, the same in Brazil. She learns Spanish and Portuguese, builds on what she picked up in Vegas and Los Angeles, and robs a bank, once, just to see if she can.

She can, but the money turns out to be sweeter when it comes from stolen art – there is something powerful, she thinks, about having others pay you for something that only costs you time and makes you as happy as stealing makes her.

She leaves Brazil for London, after that. She considers not seeing her parents, but well… She hasn't seen them in almost eight years by now, and she misses them.

They still live in the same old house, on the same old street. _Turpin_ , reads the sign right above the doorbell as she rings it – even though she can already think of fourteen different ways she could break in and they'd never know – and it's still chipped from that time her father carried in the new bookcase she had asked for.

Her father isn't home, but her mother is, and she cries when she opens the door, before she takes Lisa into a hug that is so tight she can hardly breathe.

She's missed this, she realizes.

"Hi mom," Lisa says with a smile she shapes not to be awkward, trying to fit back into the skin of Lisa Turpin. But Lisa hasn't been simply Lisa in years – or rather, Lisa hasn't been the person her parents think she is in years.

It should hurt but it doesn't, and when she smiles again it's truer. "I'm home," she adds, and it's both a lie and the truest thing Lisa could ever say.

 **.x.**

Lisa only stays at her parents for two weeks, spinning a tale of visiting Africa next. She intends to go to Africa, yes, but not before a few stops all over Europe. She knows Spanish, after all, and it'd be a shame not to practice it. Besides, she's gotten rather used to the sun.

She'd have stayed longer, but it grows uncomfortable rather quickly. Lisa is skilled at reshaping herself, at becoming someone new while still keep the parts of her old self that she likes, but this isn't the same. She thought it could be, but it's not.

It's not as much reshaping herself to fit into her parents' view of her as it is trying to fit into an old suit and finding that you outgrew it.

And so she promises her parents she'll keep writing, and lets them take her to the airport.

She throws away the fake ticket she'd shown them as soon as they leave, and she leaves with a 'borrowed' suitcase, black sunglasses, and a limp.

She spends two more weeks in London, during which she steals a piece from the British Museum for one of her foreign clients. Because she has clients now, regulars who tell her when they want a particular piece. They pay her ridiculously well, and for that alone she's inclined to obeying their wishes more often than not.

She leaves for Madrid the day after his men come to collect their prize, her money transferred to one of the offshore accounts she opened for that purpose.

She lays low for a year there, planning her next heists in the city. She uses that time to learn French, and goes back to her roots. Madrid has rich houses she can break into too, and the security systems are different in Europe. It's an interesting challenge, and it passes the time.

She has to lay low though, because Interpol is getting mixed up in all this – London set them on her trail, and she doesn't like being followed.

She pulls of the twelve different heists she had planned in a month and a half – easy, when you've had a year to prepare for them – and leaves for Paris immediately after that, shedding off a new skin on the way and stepping into a new one.

There are no more whispers from Interpol – well, no more than there should be after what she did in Madrid, and none of them seem to be particularly focused on her.

It's good, and she breathes out a sigh of relief she hadn't known she had been holding in.

Paris is… Paris is different, somehow. It's crowded and loud, and the air is polluted even on best days. She gets there on the edge of winter so the weather is mostly crappy, and renting a place, even as far from the center of the city as the one she gets, is ridiculously expensive.

Still, there is something about this city that whispers to her, an odd tinkle at the back of her mind. She still traces her mark ever night before going to sleep, trying not to think that she'll be thirty soon (what if they didn't wait for her, what if she's too late and they have already found someone to be with), and that too feels different here. More electric, somehow – energized. Yes, energized, that's the word.

She doesn't dare hope – doesn't know if she even should, or what she would hope for if she did – but she wonders. Does this tingling feeling on her wrist means that…?

For the first time in nearly ten years, she considers doing away with the black band tied around her wrist.

She compromises instead, buying a dark blue one. It's the color of the night sky, and she tries not to smile at that.

She thinks she could stay forever in this city. It's the first time she encounters a place that makes her want to stay like this, that whispers to her the way her numbers and locks do, and it scares her just as much as it excites her.

Lisa is, after all, always after new sensations.

She foregoes her usual waitressing jobs for a more permanent one. Falsifying records to get a job in a museum is harder than making the ones she needs to work in a restaurant, but she knows people, and some of them even owe her some favors.

Her primary name in France is Laura Fields, and Laura gets the job at the Louvre. She'll be working in art restoration. It's not exactly a first for her – much of the knowledge this job requires she's acquired over the years, and the same goes for the practical work.

Her first day doesn't start at all like she expected it to, though. She expected to be shown around, yes, and she was, and she expected to be briefed in more details about the security of the museum – at least half the reason she had chosen this job – and she was.

What she isn't expecting, however, is to be lead to what looks suspiciously like an interrogation room. Lisa hadn't even known museums had interrogation rooms.

Two men meet her there. The first, the one so obviously in charge, is visibly older, tall and blonde. His sneer is almost as good as Lisa's when she's playing 'rich, entitled' girl, and that is impressive, considering how long it took her to perfect it. He's wearing a dark costume that screams money and probably costs more than she'd make in a decade. Well, what she'd officially make in a decade.

The other is shorter. Brown hair, brown eyes, and kind of cute. He looks determined, but also anxious. It is a weird combination, and Lisa finds herself intrigued. By habit, she finds herself trying to take a peek at his mark – most people have no idea how much their mark reveals about them, but Lisa does, and she's taken advantage of it more than once, even discarding the black band she uses to fool people into looking the other way.

No luck there, however. The man wears long sleeves that conceal it entirely, and Lisa spares a second of disappointment before she refocuses on the blond guy in charge.

She's not really worried, though. If they were onto her, they'd be more menacing or there'd be more men, possibly both, and the cute one wouldn't be there. Besides, her fake credentials are too good to be found out here.

She's right. It turns out to be a routine questioning, to which Lisa makes sure to give all the answers Laura would give. The blond guy nods along – he's the head of security, but Lisa didn't catch his name when he introduced himself earlier.

She was too busy staring at Cute One (it's ridiculous, she needs to find his name soon, she can't keep calling him that), and from the amused look the blond sends her, he's noticed. It's fine though. More than fine, even, as it helps sells her cover.

Finally, he turns to Cute One, and introduces him. "This is Dean Thomas, he'll be your direct supervisor. Anything you need, he'll help."

"Thanks," Lisa replies, smiling gratefully, the way Laura, who's never worked in such a big museum before, would.

He smiles back very briefly – it's more of a wince, really, but Lisa appreciates the sentiment.

"I'll leave you two to it then," he finally says, nodding once again with a half-smile, and leaves. The click the door makes as it shuts sounds very final, and despite her best efforts Lisa finds that her palms are moist.

She wipes them on the legs of her trousers, and turns a smile to Dean, waiting for him to speak.

She needn't wait long. He pulls the chair across from hers, what she assumes is her resume spread in front of him, and hums.

"I was checking you out," he says, somewhat excitedly, and Lisa's blood freezes in her veins. Dean simply continues on, as if he hadn't just said the words scribbled on her wrist, the words she's been tracing every night since she was eighteen, the words she now knows so well she could rewrite them in her sleep. "You have very impressive credentials, congratulations. I look forward to working with you."

He looks up then, and freezes too, seemingly realizing what he had just said. "I mean, I wasn't checking you out – not that you don't deserve to be checked out, of course you are, you are a beautiful woman – but what I mean is that I was checking out your credentials. Checking out your credentials," he repeats, fighting furiously to hide the blush that rises on his dark cheeks.

Lisa can't help it. She laughs. It's freeing, this laughter, but also slightly hysterical. Here she is, after all, lying to who is very probably her soulmate like she lies to everyone else in her life (it bothers her now, when it never has before), planning to rob this museum she can already tell he loves very much.

Still, she should try to say something clever. Just in case. She's lived her whole life with words she could have done without – so much of her teenage years had been spent in an odd state of fear and excitement every time someone her age looked her way, wondering if maybe they'd be the one, if she really was anything worth 'checking out'.

But she's a criminal now, a thief, and for all that she tries not to hurt anyone, she knows she has had to, on occasions. She can already see that Dean is nothing like that, and he deserves better than her. However, it seems more than likely that the universe seems otherwise, and well, Lisa is tired of fighting against the universe. The least she can give him are some pretty words on his wrist to mirror hers.

But for all her grand plans – she's been thinking about this for so long, making up scenarios in the dead of night when she couldn't sleep or when she had to wait for security to leave the door she needed access unguarded – what slips out of her mouth is nothing like what she'd have wanted to say.

It figures, though, that this one thing would be out of her control.

"God, I can't believe this is happening," she says, her voice still shaking from her laughter and from something more, that heady feeling of fear and excitement she's been chasing her whole life.

This time, Dean freezes too, his eyes widening in something like realization. His hands are shaking, Lisa realizes.

They are nice hands, she notes – thin and long. Pianist hands, she thinks, but no, that's not quite right.

An artist, then, and the irony almost makes her choke. An art thief, soulmate to an artist. What a cliché that is.

For what seems like forever, they just stare at each other.

Lisa wonders what he sees when he looks at her. Does he somehow see past the Laura disguise she's wearing like a second skin, see the real her hidden beneath?

But then again, she's modelled Laura after her own self – Laura is as close to her real personality as she can get (her aliases almost always are, or they become so once she grows into them), only less adventurous and less of a criminal.

"I can't believe it either," he finally replies. His voice is surprisingly steady, and his hands are no longer shaking. His eyes, though, are unable to truly hide what he feels, though his emotions flash by too fast for Lisa to truly identify them. They shine like warm embers, and Lisa finds herself returning his smile with barely a thought and relaxing in her chair in the way she usually only does when far away from cameras, even as a quiet voice whispers in the back of her mind that it isn't normal.

"Pretty weird, huh?"

"Yeah," he admits, shaking his head slightly. His smile widens a little. "Good though, right?"

"Yeah," she echoes, and finds herself surprised to find that she means it. "It's good."

She thinks back on the girl she used to be – the one who thought she'd punch her soulmate or at least make them work for it – and wonders how she ever thought it an option. She's not that girl anymore, hasn't been in years, and it's kind of sad but mostly good.

"It's good," she repeats, and savors the way Dean's eyes soften even more.

However, as nice as this is, she came here to do a job – god, can she even go through with it anymore?

"But… Maybe we could discuss this later?"

"Of course," Dean replies, nodding along. He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and starts to tell her more about what she's going to be doing at the museum.

It twinges a little painfully in her chest, to see him close up like this, but it's also for the best. She's not ready for this, not ready to have the 'soulmate conversation' with him. She's going to ruin it, to ruin him, and then she'll run.

It's what she does, and she loves it.

But for the first time, she kind of hates it too.

 **.x.**

Her job is surprisingly interesting. She expected somewhat mind boringly repetitive tasks with equally as boring colleagues, but that's not what she gets.

Apart from Dean, the two other people she works almost consistently with are brilliant, and she's not just saying that because they're some of the cleverest people she's ever met.

There's Dr. "Call me Hermione" Granger, who somehow graduated two full years early and knows more about everything than anyone Lisa knows and yet never lords that knowledge over you. In fact she's always eager to share it. Sometimes too eager. Lisa is also sure she lives in some kind of library, because she brings a new book with her every other day.

Then there's Dr. Malfoy, who Hermione seems to hate at least as much as she loves him. He's haughty and thinks himself better than everyone, but he brings the best coffee every morning, and never forgets anyone's favorite. He likes to pretend he's cold and unfeeling, though Lisa has no idea why and no reason to look for one, which would really be more effective if Lisa hadn't seen him feed the strays that lurk around.

There are others, of course. Some she works with only on occasions, once or twice so far, others she just sees while walking through the corridors. Somehow, Lisa develops habits here, much faster than anywhere else she's ever lived. She has her favorite restaurants to eat lunch at, her favorite spots for daydreaming and walks she likes to go on during week-ends when she has nothing else to do.

It's dangerous, this way Paris and this life have of burrowing themselves underneath her skin, and she should make it stop, but she can't. Lisa has been addicted to unsafe things since she got her first pins and used them to pick her first lock, and she doesn't think that'll ever change.

Dean though, Dean might very well be the most dangerous choice she'll ever make. With his soft smiles and softer eyes, Lisa is unable to resist him.

Her real personality bleeds over into her cover stories – never enough to get any facts wrong, but always enough that Lisa isn't quite sure which parts are Laura and which parts are Lisa. It haunts her, some nights, that she doesn't know anymore. She feels adrift, and even the familiar tracing of the mark she now leaves uncovered doesn't help as much as it used to.

Dean is too nice, too perfect. He listens to her rambles about art – she's grown to like it over her years of stealing it – and in return she listens to his. He's a trap, she's sure of it, but a trap she'll walk in willingly every time.

Art is different for him than it is for her. It's his passion. She sees him sketch something once, while she passes by his office. His fingers are almost constantly shining grey with graphite dust when he escorts her out for lunch. They eat together more often than not, sometimes with other but mostly alone.

It should bother her, this intimacy they share, but somehow it doesn't. She feels completely at ease around him, relaxed in a way she usually is only in one of her safe houses, and even then the slightest noise can make her twitch. He makes her laugh and when they sit at a café's terrace overlooking the Eiffel Tower, she lets him pick the seats and doesn't even mind when that cuts of at least half of her exits.

Slowly, she opens up. He talks about his art, describes the way he sees the world, and it is beautiful. Lisa hadn't thought anyone could ever see such beauty in the world – she certainly can't, not with the kind of people she knows and has dealt with, not with the things she's done, even though theft isn't that bad, in the grand scheme of things. He's not completely innocent, of course – there are shadows in his eyes that he can't quite hide, and the need to know where they come from almost consumes her.

In return for his stories though, she tells him about her true passions. She chooses her words carefully and slowly, but whispers to him about the way the air feels on her skin when she lets herself fall, in those moments before she opens her parachute or the rope pulls her in tight. She talks about the warm exhaustion that settles deep in her belly when she climbs – not walls, she can't say walls – cliffs.

They bond, slowly but surely, and before she knows it Lisa has spent the better part of two months working there, and the exhibit she came to rob is almost over. She's learned all she could about their security system weeks ago, and had it been anywhere else, anywhen else, she'd have been long gone by now, her name shed like a tree sheds its leaves in autumn, and traded it in for a new life in another country. Rome, maybe.

Only she hasn't left yet, and she doesn't want to. She passes the exhibit every morning and it makes her fingers itch to grab something, but they also itch for Malfoy's coffee and the new restaurant Dean promised he'd show her at lunch.

And so every time she forces her hands to keep steady, and walks on by.

And so every day she falls a little bit deeper into the cover story that is Laura Fields, and a little more in love with Dean.

Of course, that couldn't last forever.

 **.x.**

The thing is, Lisa didn't actually choose this heist – it's a payment, in a way, to some Russians in exchange for most of the background on the identity she's using in Paris. Favors went a long way, of course, but stealing this one Egyptian statuette is supposed to smooth any ruffled feathers she might have inadvertently caused collecting said favors.

It's not something she'd have chosen to steal on her own – the Louvre is a place she'd been planning to hit at some point, the museum a place she'd dreamed of wandering in at night, hiding in deserted corridors, but not this soon. It's a pretty piece though, and worth quite a lot.

Unfortunately, it's also being shipped back to a private Egyptian collector at the end of the exhibit, and that was yesterday.

Tomorrow morning is the last chance Lisa will get to take the statuette so easily – well, as easily as defeating the Louvre's security system can be anyway. She should be getting to it, be getting ready to vanish into the night like the ghost she's fashioned herself into once her crime is committed, but she can't.

No, instead she's finally discovering Dean's place, her feet tucked underneath her as they share a bottle of red wine on his sofa. Winter has long settled in, and though she's only barely seen hints of snow, it has been cold enough for the gardens by the Louvre to appear frozen in the mornings.

Dean has a fireplace, built with the same kind of old stones as the rest of his apartment. Above it hangs a painting of a blazing inferno, the colors so vivid the fire almost looks alive. Between it and the fireplace that gives the place a homey feeling as soon as it's lit, Lisa thinks she could stare at the flickering flames forever, if she didn't also have Dean to catch and hold her eyes.

But she does, so she drags her eyes away from the fire. Dean's brown eyes are darker than usual, the usual chocolate color now the color of soil after the rain.

The way he looks at her is different too. He seems to be scrutinizing her face, his eyes looking for something – but what, she doesn't know – with a kind of desperate fervor that makes her shiver almost uncomfortably. It's like he's trying to peer into her soul, and it scares her a little, if she's being completely honest with herself.

She's afraid of what he'd find there. Lisa doesn't think anyone could ever really like what they'd see in her soul.

She's afraid of what this could lead to, if she let it, and so instead of leaning forward like she almost desperately wants to, she raises the glass to her lips and drinks.

Dean mirrors her action, an odd mix of what she thinks are regret and relief flashing in his eyes, before reaching for her free hand with his.

Dean has warm hands. It's not the first time they've held hands, so she knew that already, but it feels different now, in so intimate of a setting.

Neither of them has said a word for a while now, not since they've stopped talking about work and Dean opened the wine bottle, and the silence stretches on for what feels like forever before Lisa finally chooses to speak again.

"Can I see your mark?" She asks, her throat unnaturally tight, putting down her half-emptied glass on the glass table in front of the sofa.

"Sure," Dean agrees, setting down his glass as well. Without letting go of her hand, he uses his free hand to roll up his sleeve, slowly uncovering the words there.

She already knew what she would find there, but somehow actually seeing it feels different. Something in her stomach tightens, and she's tracing the words she somehow left on him before she can stop herself, her fingers trailing lightly over one letter after the other.

She feels Dean shiver under her fingers, and something in the atmosphere just _shifts_. Her breath catches in her throat and she jerks her hands away like she's been burned.

"I'm sorry," Lisa says, feeling like she's just run miles, "I don't know what came over me."

"It's fine," Dean replies, his voice slightly strangled. His fingers are trailing his letters too now, the movements repeating the ones she had made just seconds ago, and it's Lisa's turn to shiver. "No harm done."

"Even so, I shouldn't have," Lisa says, and she bites her tongue until she tastes blood, because she wants nothing more than to tell him the truth, tell him who she is, why she's really here (and that it's no longer why she's _staying_ , please, believe her), and that would ruin everything, so she can't.

"If not you, then who?" He sighs, looking down at his empty hands before clenching his jaw and looking up. There is fire in his eyes, and his tone is unrelenting when he speaks this time. "Laura, we'll have to speak about this one day – we're soulmates, and that means something."

His eyes seem to burn a hole through her soul. "You can tell me anything, you know that right? I know we haven't known each other long, but if you don't… If you don't want _this_ , I'll get it."

"I know," Lisa replies, and is surprised to find that it is completely true. She laughs. "I know, and I do. I really do. I just… There are some things I need to take care of first, and then we'll talk, really talk, alright?" She doesn't even know what she'll say or do, but she knows she has to figure out something, so she will.

"Whatever you want," he promises, and Lisa can't help but smile back helplessly and lean forward.

Their lips meet in midair, and Lisa closes her eyes. They shuffle closer until they no longer can, and when they part, flushed and out of breath, they stay quiet for a moment until Dean lets out a gargled "Bedroom."

"Bedroom," Lisa agrees, too drunk on happiness to think of all the reasons why she shouldn't, and they move.

When she wakes, everything is still dark, and Dean isn't by her side. His half of the bed still feels warm though, and blinking her eyes open simply show him standing in front of the window, his face dimly lit by the light from his phone.

He's speaking quietly but with an urgent tone she has never heard from him, and so, curious, she closes back her eyes and pretends to still be sleeping.

She can't hear the person on the other end of the phone, doesn't even know if it's a he or a she, but whoever they are, they don't sound too happy about something.

"I know we don't have much time," Dean is saying, "but there really haven't been any signs."

He's quiet for a moment, and when he speaks again Lisa can hear the wince in his voice. "I've been doing all I can, you know that. And I don't know. Maybe we were wrong. Wouldn't be the first time."

Another few moments of uneasy silence pass. "I know what I said, but I'm still not sure, and you know we can't afford to get this wrong. It'd be a nightmare, and no, not just for me."

This time, the silence is easier – friendlier, almost. Dean hums along a few times, and once he even laughs, the sound so very quiet Lisa almost misses it.

"Don't be an idiot," he whispers, and Lisa can hear the eyeroll, "you know I'm always careful. It's like, my second name by now, I should be the one to tell you that. Set fire to anything recently?"

He laughs again, a soft, hushed sound that somehow manages to fill the room. "It was more than one time, but sure, whatever you say. I guess I'll see you soon then?"

The conversation winds down after that, and son enough Dean slips back beside her, the sheets barely rustling. He presses a kiss on her bare shoulder and it takes all Lisa has to keep her body relaxed and unresponsive.

She drifts off a long time after Dean does, a feeling of dread pitted at the bottom of her stomach, her heart racing like a wild horse in her chest. There could be a hundred of explanations for what that phone call meant, and she likes none of them. She likes the fact that she can hardly ask for explanations even less.

The next morning, when they wake up, she swipes his phone while he's in the bathroom - his password is hard to crack but she doesn't have to, because she's spent weeks watching him and his habits, and he used his phone more than once in front of her, and once was really all she ever needed. The caller ID just reads _Seamus_. There's no picture, no other intel, but the number has been there for a while.

Maybe he's a coworker she's never met, or an old friend, or maybe even both. Granger and Malfoy did mention more than once that Dean only started working there a few months before her, and that he's worked in various galleries before.

It's a valid theory but it doesn't sound quite right, and if there's one thing the years have taught her it's to always trust her instincts. She eyes the number long enough to memorize it, and then puts the phone back where she found it before joining Dean under the shower.

She can figure out this mystery later, if she even has to.

And god, please, make it so she doesn't have to.

 **.x.**

The exhibit closes, the artefacts are shipped back to where they belong, and Lisa stays right where she is because Dean is there too. She spends half her evening with him now, and more than half of those end up in a bed, be it hers or his.

There are no more mysterious phone calls in the middle of the night, at least no more that she catches, and Dean seems to relax more and more with every passing week, losing a tension Lisa hadn't even really known he was carrying across his shoulders.

She still catches him looking over his shoulders sometimes, or with his eyes vacantly staring at the horizon like he expects something to pop up there and ruin everything. Lisa knows that look, because she sees it too often in the mirror.

But still, she stays, and allows herself to burrow herself deeper and deeper into her cover story, until her fingers no longer twitch when she notices a priceless artefact, until her first reflex no longer is to find half a dozen ways to steal it.

It'd be foolish to forget her old life, foolish to think that she can have this, that it can't catch up to her. It'd be foolish, and in this Lisa is very foolish indeed.

She's foolish, maybe, but Dean is worth it, worth every inch of her that she trims away, even if it tears at her heart to do so.

This is love, she tells herself, and tries to truly think of herself as Laura instead of Lisa. And maybe it would have worked, if not for the Russians.

The Russians, who she owed – the Russians, who didn't even have to look for long to find the one leverage the Magpie would do everything for. And that's Dean.

Lisa doesn't know why she didn't expect it – or rather, she knows only too well. She got complacent, allowed her hard-earned reflexes to dull, and the worst part is that she can't even bring herself to truly mind those new weaknesses. Not when they mean she's closer to the wide-eyed girl she used to be than to the cold-hearted thief she grew up into.

Regardless of all that however, the fact that she didn't expect it, saw nothing of it coming – even though she should have known, should have realized that no contact from the Russians when they had been expecting a delivery could only mean bad things – makes her as furious as it scares her.

It all starts one morning like any other, on her way to the museum. She picks up croissants and other assorted pastries for Dean and the people she's grown to consider friends, drops them in the break room where she knows they'll be found in the next few minutes, and heads to Dean's office to say hi.

They keep it professional in the office, but everyone knows about them anyway. Lisa's not sure they know about the soulmate part, but it honestly wouldn't surprise her. Still, there is a code, and they're both eager to follow it, which means that apart from her swinging by his office in the mornings to greet him with a kiss and the 'my place tonight's in the evenings, nothing really changes.

Which is how Lisa knows something is wrong the moment she realizes Dean isn't in his office.

Dean is always in his office in the morning. He's the first one to get there, and there are days where Lisa knows he barely leaves the room, not even to eat. So for him not to be there… Well, it sparks up all the alarm signals in her head, and sends a shiver of dread down her spine.

"Hey, have any of you seen Dean this morning?" She asks when she reenters the break room.

"No," Malfoy replies, somehow managing to look perfectly dignified as he eats a pastry that would leave crumbs everywhere on anyone else (trust her, Lisa knows this from experience).

Beside him, Hermione swallows her mouthful and echoes the sentiment. "We haven't seen him, sorry. Did you check his office?"

Before Lisa can answer, Malfoy interrupts her, his tone bitingly sarcastic. "Of course she checked his office, haven't you noticed that it's only the second place she visits every morning?"

Hermione rolls her eyes at him. "I know, but it never hurts to check your facts. Maybe he had a meeting or something though? He didn't mention anything to us, but it could have happened."

"Right, then. Thanks," Lisa replies, trying to hide her blush.

But over the course of the morning, it becomes apparent that Dean is not, in fact, in any kind of a meeting. Several other museum employees, some she's never seen, others she knows from sight, come to her for information. Somehow, they seem to be under the impression that Dean is sick, which can't be true because he'd have told her.

Something isn't right, whispers a little voice at the corner of her mind, and it keeps getting louder as the day goes on. She leaves for lunch, and calls in sick. If it's good enough to be Dean's excuse, it'll work for her too.

She's too nervous to eat, but she chugs down a bottle of water and a somewhat stale pastry she grabs on her way out anyway. She knows the way to Dean's apartment by heart now, and could get there blindfolded. It helps now, as panic puts a fog on her thoughts that only clears once she reaches his door.

A handful of months ago she'd never have gone anywhere without her tools, but these days they're collecting dust in a secret compartment hidden beneath a loose floorboard. She could do with the paperclips she has in her bag, of course, but it chills something in her blood to realize that she's allowed herself to change so much.

As it turns out, however, she doesn't even need to. The door is slightly ajar, and one slight push is all it takes to open it.

The place is pristine. Lisa doesn't really know why, but she had expected it to be a mess. Instead it looks just like it was, only emptier.

"Dean?" She calls out, proud of the way her voice isn't shaking. "Are you there?"

No one answers her, and the feeling of dread in her stomach only intensifies.

"Dean?" She repeats, digging into her purse for the taser that she always carries everywhere when once again only silence answers her.

She makes her way from the entrance to the living-room slowly, her fingers clenched so tightly around her weapon that its edges dig painfully into her palm.

She knows for sure something is wrong when she smells the smoke. It doesn't come from a fire, but from the cigar the man currently sitting on Dean's sofa – the sofa where she always curls up against him and he pretends it bothers him before wrapping his arms around her – is smoking.

She barely registers the _clicks_ the guns make as his bodyguards take their safety off when they point them at her, and steps forward anyway.

"Igor, I presume?" Lisa says, her voice steady as she forces herself to slide into the skin of her alter-ego. It surprises her, how well it still fits, how much she still loves it. "I believe you have something of mine, then."

The man laughs, and gestures at her to come sit by his side. Not on the sofa – never mind that it would be incredibly stupid of her to do so, it would still make it too easy for her too slide a knife between his ribs before anyone could stop her – but on the assorted chair one of his acolytes brought forward.

"Cорока," he replies with a heavy Russian accent, his tone just as even. "I believe you owe me something first."

"I don't have it," she states as she takes her seat. From his own seat, Igor gestures at his men to stand down.

"We had guessed that," Igor states. He smiles, a cruel thing that highlights the scar of his right cheek – from the cold and calculating gleam in his blue eyes, she can tell he knows that fact very well. She glares right back at him, unwilling to show any fear, and she can tell he appreciates it from the flash of interest I his eyes. "Which is why we gathered a little insurance of our own."

Lisa's heart skips a beat, and curses herself immediately when Igor's smile widens as he settles deeper in the sofa.

"I see we were right to do so," he adds almost softly, before taking another deep breath on his cigar. The smoke he exhales is almost suffocating as he twirls in the air and around her, but Lisa forces herself to ignore it and the way its taste clings to her tongue as she speaks.

"Where is he?"

"Somewhere… Safe. As long as you deliver what you promised, he will not be harmed."

"And I suppose you will want some interests to go along with that?" Lisa spits out, unimpressed and too used to this game to be surprised.

Igor's men take angry steps forward, their gun raised at her again. With a simple wave of his hand as he laughs again, Igor makes them halt.

It's a show of power, she knows that. He wants to impress her, to remind her of who holds the power here – he wants to scare her, and it wouldn't be working if only he didn't have a hostage, and he knows that.

"They told me you had fire, воришка. I like that. And да, we want some… shall we say collateral? It would be in good form. After all, you did fail to deliver last time."

"I didn't fail, I changed my mind," Lisa replies.

"Well then, you just have to change it again. It shouldn't be too difficult for you to do," Igor replies, his teeth bared in a semblance of a smile.

"And if I don't?"

"Well then, I'm afraid you won't see your little friend again," Igor shrugs. "It'd be a shame – I hear you got quite attached to him."

Lisa swears violently in her head, outwardly only allowing her eyes to narrow as she forces her head to keep steady.

"I see. Then I don't believe you'll have a problem with me asking for proof that you indeed have him, and that he is still alive?"

"Of course not," Igor replies, before nodding at one of his men, spitting out a few sentences in Russian too quickly for Lisa to follow even if she did speak the language, which she doesn't. It is quickly rising on her list of languages to learn though.

The man throws Igor a phone, who dials a number Lisa can't quite catch – she can make out the first couple of digits, enough to tell her that Dean is probably still in France, but that's about it – and has a quick conversation in Russian with whoever picks up.

He throws her the phone with a smirk after that, his eyes dancing as Lisa barely catches it. Surprisingly enough, it's one of the newest models of smartphones, which means that Lisa can see _and_ talk to Dean through it.

Her first thought is that he looks good – well, as much as one can tied to a chair with their arms behind their back. He's a little unkept and sweaty, but definitely unharmed, and Lisa has to close her eyes for an instant as a wave of relief sweeps through her. Igor had no reason to lie, but seeing proof helps immensely.

There are a thousand words on her tongue – mostly apologies for dragging him into this – but she has time for none of them, so instead she focuses and simply asks how he is with a voice she hopes doesn't sound as strangled as it feels.

From the concern she can read on Dean's face, it doesn't quite work. She can read something else there too. Anger, fear, a touch of disappointment and what she can only describe as self-hatred. It makes no sense to her, that he would feel those things, but it twinges at her heart nonetheless.

"I'm fine," he replies, his voice oddly steady for someone feeling so much. "But Laura, please, listen to me, whatever they ask you to do, it's not worth it – don't do it, don't-"

A man Lisa hadn't noticed steps out of the shadows and backhands Dean so hard he spits out blood.

She doesn't even notice she's screamed his name until Dean smiles at her, his teeth bloody, and tells her not to worry because he's hard worse. She's never wanted to hate someone so badly, but her heart is still racing too fast in her chest, and she needs to keep her composure if she wants to get them out of this in one piece.

"I'm sorry," she tells Dean, her fingers curled around the phone like maybe if she tightens her grip just a little more, it'll be his hand she's holding. "I'm sorry," she repeats, and blinks back the tears that want to fall.

She wants to tell him the truth so hard – wants to hear him call her by her real name at least once – but this isn't the time for it.

And god, Dean is looking at her like he understands, when he can't possibly know what's going on inside her mind, and it's messing her up.

"I'll explain everything to you later, okay?"

"Well, it looks like I'm not going anywhere, so…" Dean tries to joke, but it falls flat. "See you later?"

"See you later," Lisa echoes, and tries to convey her promises with her eyes before the call gets cut off.

She takes a moment to compose herself, and when she turns back to Igor and his men, who look impossibly smug, her eyes are cold and fire burns low in her stomach even as she starts planning exit strategies. It's harder, to plan for two people, but she's made riskier plans before and had them work.

"So what do I have to steal?" Lisa asks, tone unnaturally even.

"Good choice," Igor replies, and then smiles, a thin thing that's more teeth than anything else, before he nods at one of his men.

The man hands Lisa a list. There's half a dozen items on it, not counting the artefact she was supposed to steal for them in the first place, and Lisa feels dread pool in her stomach. This won't be easy. Her eyes roaming over the list, she starts making plans – it's lucky she'd already looked into the Egyptian collector, because otherwise pulling this off would be next to impossible. As it is, it will only be extremely dangerous.

"I'll need a month."

"You have two weeks," Igor counters.

"Three weeks."

"This isn't a negotiation: you have two weeks."

"And I'm telling you I'll need at least three if you want all of these items," Lisa replies curtly.

Igor takes a moment to consider, before nodding. "Three weeks, then. We'll send you the coordinates for the drop then. Don't miss it, or you can say goodbye to your little boy-toy."

"See you in three weeks, then," Lisa spits back, showing as much of her anger as she dares to, before exiting Dean's place with her head high.

Panicking can wait until later – until she actually has a plan. For now, she simply doesn't have enough time for that.

 **.x.**

It is surprisingly easy to resign from her job. The way she figures it, there is no way Lisa can go missing for three weeks – the same three weeks during which, hopefully, some recently lent artefacts will get stolen from their original owner – and not lose the job anyway.

Vanishing completely from Paris and France is slightly harder, but well, this is isn't the first time she's had to do this, and faking your death really is only difficult the first time.

She hadn't intended to run, but she has everything she needs to prepared anyway, and thank god for that.

Fourteen hours after she last saw Dean's face, Lisa gets on a plane to Cairo. That's not where her target lives, but it's close enough that she can rent a car to go the rest of the way. Evading tracking is in her blood by now – it's a second nature, and besides, she really doesn't want to be tracked down for this, not when Dean's life depends on it. Her wrist aches underneath the black band she's wearing again for the first time in months, and it takes all she has not to try to rub the pain away.

Every minute she drives on the dusty roads feels like hours, and by the time she gets to where she's supposed to, and finds a hotel that has a free room for her, she feels like she could sleep for a week. Unfortunately, she has no time for that. Instead she takes a quick shower and two aspirins to stave off the fatigue headache she can already feel is coming, and starts planning.

There is a lot she can't do yet, not until she can do some recon on the house, but she can already start working on her exit plans, including how to smuggle the items out of the country, and preparing lists of what she might need, so that's what she does. She bought some crackers at the airports so she munches on them as she plots, and before she knows it the sun has come down and it's time for her to go do that recon she needs.

There is no time for her usual infiltration techniques, the ones she gotten so good at over the years, so she goes back to the basics, setting up shop in a little restaurant that is so conveniently right in front of the place she's casing. She orders dinner and pretends to be a tourist as she takes pictures of her surroundings, and if someone notices that she takes more photos of the large house on the other side of the road than of anything else, they don't say anything.

The restaurant closes at two am, which is when Lisa leaves and tries to get a closer look at the security system.

There are guards – five that she can see, but she hears them speaking to at least three others – and security cameras everywhere she looks. That's not counting the security on the inside, which she's going to need to get pretty soon.

The more she finds out, the worse this job is looking, and yet… And yet, with every obstacle she finds, Lisa feels adrenaline thrumming through her veins, giving her more energy and making her feel on top of the world, like she can do anything. It's a dangerous feeling, but one she hadn't realized she had missed so much until she can feel it again.

The days blur together a little after that. She sneaks in one afternoon, pretending to have something to deliver. She doesn't expect it to work as well as it does, but with a liberal application of charm and persuasion, she manages to get everything she needs for the actual break-in.

Igor gave her a cellphone before she left, a black blocky thing that looks a decade out of age, and she watches it with trepidation each day and night, not sure whether to hope to hear it ring or not. It haunts her, that cellphone, and that she has to keep it close, always burning a hole in the pockets she puts it in.

She still has four days until her deadline when she finally makes her move. The night is cloudy and her shadow blends in perfectly as she moves through the streets and into the house, disabling security as she goes. It's not her usual MO, but it works, even though her heart is beating so fast it's a wonder no one else can hear it.

She's read the list Igor gave her so many times it's basically engraved in her brain now, but locating the items she's after is still harder than she'd like. She's had less time to prepare for this heist than for any other she's done – at least any with that level of security – and while she believes she can pull it off, she's actually scared that she won't.

She's sweating and anxious and out of breath by the time she finally manages to find the statuette – ironically the last item on the list. She's still smiling, still on the greatest adrenaline rush she's ever felt, when she exits the building, silent as a ghost, and thinks 'I never want to give this up'.

She hates herself for it, it feels like the greatest betrayal, but it's true. This – stealing – is her life, and she's been more alive in the last couple of hours than she's ever been in Paris, except for the moments she shared with Dean. And even those can't quite counterbalance the fact that becoming Laura Fields was slowly killing her, even if she didn't really realize it.

She leaves town that very same night, and heads back for Cairo, newly purchased airplane ticket to Paris secured in her backpack, the stolen items in a black suitcase in the back of the car. She has contacts in Cairo who will take care of getting it to Paris, and she has never been more grateful for being in this line of work than she is now.

The flight back to Paris is probably the most stressful flight she's ever had to take. Every time someone looks at her, even if it's merely a flight attendant asking her if she needs anything, she has to hold back a flinch, until the only way to convince the people around her that she's not up to something is to tell them that she's deathly scared of flying, when she in fact loves it.

She hates the fact that she can't use her phone in the plane, hates the way the minutes pass like hours, hates the way her mind keeps whispering _what-ifs_ to hear (what if they call, what if I miss it, what if something happens). Most of all though, she hates the way she can't keep her fingers from sneaking underneath the black band she still wears to caress the words inked on her wrist.

"My condolences," says the old lady sitting next to Lisa.

"I'm sorry?"

"My condolences," the woman repeats, her voice kind. She shows off her own black band to Lisa with a wry smile. "I know what it's like. My husband died four years ago."

"I'm not…" Lisa starts, and then cuts herself off. Truth is, she doesn't really know what she and Dean are, especially now that she's gotten him abducted. He has to have found out that she's been lying to him by now, and she can't really imagine that they could resume their life together, at least not the way it was before all this.

"I-Thank you," Lisa finally says, subdued. It really hits her then, that even if she manages to make this exchange, to free Dean and have him be alright, she's probably lost him anyway. Still, she'd rather have him alive and able to, maybe, forgive her one day, than have him dead and never know what he feels. "And, err, my condolences for your loss too."

"Thank you, my dear," the woman replies, patting Lisa's hand with her own in a gesture that reminds the thief of her own grandmother. It brings tears to her eyes, and Lisa tries desperately to blink them away.

Lisa's pretty sure it only works so well because the old lady kindly chooses to ignore it.

Even with that encounter, Lisa is impossibly glad when the flight finally lands. Surprisingly, it still feels a little bit like coming home – she thought it wouldn't, not after the way she had left, and in leaving discovered just how much of her life there had been burrowing her head in the sand.

She has no trouble getting her luggage, nor in exiting the airport, and as much as she'd like to head back to the apartment Laura Fields used to rent, with its perfect water pressure and silks sheets, she heads for an hotel instead.

The only reason she notices her tail is that she's still so keyed up from knowing she's an inch away from pulling this off, from getting Dean back and being able to vanish back into the world the way she always does, should she have to.

He's alone, and disguised as a tourist – camera hanging around his neck, black backpack sporting a half-folded map on his back, wearing an 'I love Paris' T-Shirt – but Lisa makes him as something else by the third time she spots him. He's been on her since the airport, and despite her best efforts, she can't seem to manage to lose him.

She can't afford not to though – she's supposed to pick the artefacts in one hour and twelve minutes, and that is barely enough time for her to get there without a tail to lose, let alone with one. Which is why she sneaks in a dark alley, and corners the guy.

He's tall – well, taller than her. He has sandy brown hair that flops a little over his forehead, and from the spot where she hid Lisa has a perfect view of the way his demeanor entirely changes the moment he realizes he can't see her anymore. He swears quietly, a light Irish accent coming through, and reaches into his pocket to check his phone.

He looks right at where she's hiding, and that's when Lisa realizes that somehow, he knows exactly where she is.

 _A bug_ , her mind supplies immediately, and now she's the one cursing, though she does it silently. It must have happened at the airport. She's still carrying her bags, and she barely left them unattended for five minutes, but that would have been enough for her. Clearly, it's enough for this guy too.

She's considering her exits – she has several, none of them optimal, and all of them would hurt in some way and lose her precious time – when the man talks.

He calls her by her borrowed name, the one she used in Paris, and he speaks in a too even tone she knows too well from hearing it in her own voice, a tone that speaks of carefully concealed panic. Maybe that's why she doesn't try running.

"What do you want?" She asks, scanning his face for any trace of treachery. She finds none, but that doesn't reassure her, not when she can still feel the seconds ticking off at the back of her mind.

The man's eyes are like steel, unyielding and cold, even as they burn with a fire she recognizes. "My name's Seamus Finnegan. I have some questions for you about the whereabouts of Dean Thomas."

Lisa's blood freezes in her veins. "I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about."

"Nice try, but that's not going to work. We know – I know that you know him, and I also know that you know what happened to him. So you can tell me, or I can arrest you."

"Arrest me? For what?"

"Considering that Laura Fields did not exist before you appeared in Paris, I'm sure I can figure out something."

"Considering that I'm here and that I exist, you must be wrong."

"Right, of course I am," Finnegan replies dryly. "It's not like we didn't find evidence of that, after all."

Finnegan keeps talking, and Lisa tunes him out. Her time is running out, she needs to get out of there and to that warehouse where the stolen items are, and Finnegan is standing in her way. He's some kind of agent, which is bad, and he's seen her face, which is even worse, but for Dean she's willing to take him out. For Dean, she would do anything.

She's pretending to listen, the 'I don't know what you're talking about' charade a play she's perfected years ago, and slowly reaching for the taser she always carries with her, when he mentions a few words that make her stop in her tracks.

"Wait, what do you mean Dean's your partner?"

 **.x.**

As it turns out, Finnegan works for Interpol, and so does Dean. Lisa wants to say she never saw this coming, but as she listens to him explain things, she realizes that Dean being an Interpol agent sent undercover to protect the museum's collection from an imminent threat (her) makes sense of everything that bugged her about him.

It's so ironic that she can't help but laugh. God, she hopes he's not hurting as much as she is right now, because the pain in her heart as she learns that their life together was a lie anyway is terrible, and she wishes it on no one, not even the man who's the other half of the equation.

"Look, right now I could care less about your illegal activities-"

" _Alleged_ illegal activities," Lisa can't help but correct, her lips twisting in a faint smirk.

"Fine, _alleged_ ," Finnegan repeats with an exasperated eye roll. "What I mean is, I just really want to find my partner, so where is he?"

Lisa debates telling him the truth, or at least telling it in a way that doesn't really implicate her, for a moment before she speaks again.

"He's fine. I think. And no, I don't know where he is."

"Then how do you know he's fine?"

Lisa hesitates, her hand inching toward the pocket the burner phone is burning a hole into. She really doesn't want to say anything, but she's been in over her head since this turned into a kidnapping, and she knows this. Dean trusts this guy, and for anything but his life, Lisa would trust him too, but this is too important to mess up, not when she is so close.

Finally, she sighs. "I got a call when they took him. I saw him, he was kept safe."

"But they didn't know he was Interpol."

The words burn in her throat, but she says them anyway. "No, they didn't. But I'm betting they still don't, or I'd have heard about it."

Finnegan lets out a deep breath and runs a shaking hand through his hair. "Right, you're right. So, what did they want?"

Lisa bites her lips.

"Oh for God's sake, I don't care about your sticky fingers right now, I just want him back!"

"They may have wanted me to acquire some items for them," Lisa confesses reluctantly.

"Oh, that is perfect. That is great!" Finnegan throws his arms up in the air in frustration, and huffs so strongly Lisa is almost surprised not to see steam coming out of his nose. He runs his hand through his hair again. "And I guess you have those items?"

"If you really want to know, I was on my way to getting them when _someone_ interrupted me," Lisa bites back.

"Oh, excuse me for doing my job, and trying to find out where my partner ended up," Finnegan replies just as sarcastically, and where it any other time, Lisa thinks she could get to like this guy. As it is he just annoys her.

"Yeah, well he's my soulmate so I figure I get precedence," Lisa says mulishly, the words slipping out before she can hold them back.

The silence is deafening, and Lisa doesn't think she's ever seen someone look as taken aback as Finnegan currently is.

"You're _what_?"

"His soulmate," Lisa confirms, too tired to try to deny it now that the cat's out of the bag. "Now you either let me go, or you arrest me, but either way I'm going to find a way to get to Dean."

They stare off for what feels like hours, until Finnegan nods once.

"Or, I could come with you," he offers, and his tone makes it pretty clear that it's not a suggestion.

"Fine," Lisa agrees, too aware that they don't have the time to keep arguing. She sets off at a brisk pace, and Finnegan follows. "But I'm driving."

"Like hell you are," Finnegan replies, his voice indignant. "It's my car!"

"Yes, but I'm the one with the keys," Lisa says, said keys dangling from her fingers, silver metal glinting in the light.

Finnegan's sputtering face is perhaps the best thing she's seen in weeks, and it almost makes her feel truly like herself again.

 **.x.**

Amazingly enough, the retrieval goes off without a hitch. They get there in time and Lisa exits the warehouse with a full suitcase Finnegan 'you should call me Seamus' refuses to see the inside of.

Seamus gets a hotel room right next to hers after that, but he stays in hers anyway, waiting just like she is for the call from Igor that will tell them where to go next.

The call comes the next day, about twenty-four hours before the deadline Lisa had been given. She wants to be mad at them for violating that, since they set the meet on that very day, but truth is she's too relieved to finally be seeing an end to this to care.

The address he gives them is that of a barge on the Seine, and frankly Lisa thinks she should have expected something like this. When they get there, the barge looks like it has seen better days, but it's clear it's the right one – Lisa recognizes one of the man standing guard in front of it as one of Igor's men.

"You were supposed to come alone," goon number says with a frown.

"And you were supposed to only call tomorrow," Lisa replies in the same tone, standing with her back straight in the way she always does when she has to meet intimidating people. "I think that makes us even."

Beside her, Seamus shifts awkwardly on his feet, and Lisa sends him a warning look to keep still. Luckily, the two goons are too busy radioing in to pay much notice to them, and Seamus' moment of weakness goes unnoticed.

"This way, please," goon number two finally says, leading them further into the ship. It looks as gloomy inside than outside, and the rocking feeling of being on the water is enough to make Lisa unsteady, which she guesses is doubtlessly one of the goals here.

They end up in a room bigger than Lisa thought a barge could contain. Dean is there, tied to a chair again, and gagged. He's thinner, a little bruised, and his hair is mated with dirt and other things Lisa doesn't care to identify, but other than that he looks mostly alright. She has to restrain herself not to directly go by his side, and at her back she can feel Seamus do the same.

She sees the moment Dean notices his partner by the way his eyes widen and his mouth opens around the gag. She winks at him, trying to pretend that she's more okay with this than she actually is, and turns toward the looming figure of the man she knows as Igor.

"Let him go now," Lisa says, facing Igor.

"Show me that you have what I asked for, and he's all yours, сорока," Igor counters, gesturing at one of his men to stand by Dean's side.

"Untie him first, then I'll show you the merchandise," Lisa replies. Seamus inches closer to her, the large, heavy black bag she's making him carry brushing against her legs.

"Fine," Igor relents, and with a slick sound what ties Dean to the chair is cut, leaving him to rub his wrists and roll his shoulders as he finally gets back the freedom to move. "Now give me what you promised me."

Lisa nods and grabs the bag she's entrusted to Seamus. It is heavy, but she has carried heavier. Besides, Igor isn't far, and it takes her only a few steps before she can drop the bag before him.

A squirrelly man Lisa hadn't really paid much attention to steps out of the shadows and starts examining the contents of the bag. It feels like it takes him hours, and holding back the jitters this situation gives her is getting more and more difficult, but finally the man nods. Igor smiles, looking satisfied, and extends a hand for Lisa to take.

"Pleasure doing business with you, сорока."

"I'd like to say the same, but I'm sure you'll see why I have to disagree," Lisa replies dryly, shaking his hand firmly.

Igor laughs, and makes a gesture toward his men. Dean is pushed forward until he almost trips right into Seamus, and Lisa is not jealous of that at all. She's really not.

They leave the barge as quickly as they can after that, and Lisa doesn't breathe until they're actually outside, breathing in fresh air again.

Dean's fingers are shaking still as they tug down the gag, but his hands are steady as he grabs her shoulders and tugs her forward into a kiss.

"I missed you," he whispers against her lips, and it makes her tear up, because despite everything she's learned, she's missed him too.

"Missed you too," she replies in much the same way, before regretfully tearing herself away from him.

She takes his hand in hers and reaches out with her other hand to caress the words inked on his wrist. Beside them, Seamus averts his eyes.

Lisa knows Dean gets it when his hand tightens in hers.

"Wait," Dean rasps out, reaching for her sleeve with a shaky hand. "Will I ever see you again?"

For a moment Lisa considers cutting ties, considers saying no. It would be better, she thinks, for them to stay away from each other. No more lies.

It hurts too much to think about it for long, so instead she evades, shrugging off the question.

"Maybe," she replies, shrugging her shoulders in what she hopes looks nonchalant. She sneaks in a hug, soaking up his warmth as much as she can, whispers her real name in his ear – and she knows it's dangerous, knows she shouldn't and what it means to give her true identity to the agent chasing her, but it's Dean and she just can't bear the thought that he still doesn't know her name.

She hugs him, kisses his cheek and then she leaves, melting herself in the crowded streets of Paris.

 **.x.**

When it happens, there are no warning signs. Four months since Paris, since Dean was held hostage and saved by the thief he couldn't help but fall in love with – the thief who had his words, and he should have known better, should have been better, but the heart does what it wants, doesn't it?

Four months since he last saw the girl he knew as Alice (as the Magpie, the thief he's chased all across the world - as Lisa, the girl who saved his life), and she just shows up in his apartment in London, looking for all the world like she never even left.

"Missed me?" She says, and step closer until she can drag him into a kiss.

"You staying?" He asks back once they part, still out of breath.

Her eyes twinkles as she considers, and finally she smiles, running her hands on his chest. "I figure I can be convinced to stay for a while, yes."

She drags him by the tie, leading them to the bedroom, and Dean follows.

He would follow her anywhere.


End file.
